[Coco] Software testing for FDC emulator

[Arthur Flexser]

Thanks, Darren.

I'm not familiar with DMK files.  How does a protected CoCo floppy get
transformed into such a file?  I take it that DMK files are already usable
by a CoCo emulator, without need for special hardware?
Art
On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 2:38 AM, Darren A <mechacoco at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 8:38 PM, Arthur Flexser  wrote:
> >
> > One thing I'm not clear on about the FDC emulator:
> >
> > Is this something that reads a real protected CoCo floppy under a CoCo
> > emulator running on a Windows machine that has a floppy drive?  Or has
> the
> > CoCo floppy been somehow transformed into a data file that mimics
> > its nonstandard track structure, and that is what the FDC emulator uses
> as
> > its input?  If the latter, how was the transformation accomplished?
> >
>
> ---
>
> My FDC emulator is yet another piece of hardware that plugs into the
> CoCo's cartridge port or an MPI.  It appears as a standard floppy disk
> controller to the CoCo, but will typically interface with a server on
> a separate PC instead of a real floppy drive.  The server must support
> a more robust disk image format (DMK being the obvious choice) in
> order to deal with copy-protected software and non-standard disk
> formats.
>
> In addition to emulating a floppy disk controller, the device can also
> be used to download ROM pak images from a server and execute them with
> read-only access to the code.
>
> I know Steve Bjork has announced a similar project which sounds a
> little more advanced than mine.  I've been working on my design (when
> I can find the spare time) for about two years now, so I plan on
> seeing it through to completion.  It's been quite challenging and also
> a lot of fun.
>
> Darren
>
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